The Binary Ghost

V - Dura Lex

— East, west, home's best, boy. Said Samson calmly as he sat in the metal chair of that interrogation room with an unbearable industrial smell of multi-purpose lavender detergent.

The most feared police chief of District 15 - the division of the city that housed the most dangerous sectors of the city - was known not necessarily for being a living legend, but precisely for being - in a perfect consensus - seen by the world of crime and also by the entire executive body of the state, as the most indomitable police officer who had inhabited the surface of that dying land. An indomitable, architectural, physical, wise, and experienced law enforcement agent.

That was Samson, inside and outside the police station, awake or sleeping, with or without a uniform. In the highest hierarchy of the national police academy, his time was scarce and his attention was sometimes more sought after than some of the most influential people in the country. Even so, that day he had decided to go personally to an interrogation room to see a recently detained suspect with the only eye he had left.

Interrogation rooms translated to Samson a deep sense of nostalgia from the forty-some years of his career when he had already come across every kind of psychopath that a society on the brink of collapse was capable of engineering.

Interrogation techniques invented by him were taught to cadets in training and some of his persuasion strategies were kept in confidential documents with the unusual objective of pursuing and protecting facts in the name of the purest law.

There was only one particular tool of Samson's that could not be replicated by other police officers because it stayed on his middle finger and only usually came out when he needed to speed up an interrogation.

He stared fixedly at the suspect who tried to delay the start of that dialogue by avoiding Samson's presence while looking down. But seconds were worth minutes to the police chief and he decided to buy an hourglass.

He unscrewed the silver ring from his finger, held it in his right hand, and with the most inexplicable vertical strength of a slap, positioned it on the table, where the heavy meeting of metals resonated the sharpest and loudest sound of a physical shock that for a split second seemed like a thunder that penetrated all the walls of that police station and reached the eardrum of the detained man.

Wolfcrown raised his face to reveal a coagulated trail of blood that traveled from his nose to his chin and also revealed the physical and mental fatigue that only a stun grenade exploding at point-blank range was capable of causing.

— Let's reforge an old agreement, Wolf. Sooner rather than later, you help me and I'll help you.

— You haven't aged at all, Uncle Zeus, said Wolfcrown after realizing that he was completely stuck in that room with his first and only mentor and that he would have to face him in a duel of minds while feeling his head pulsing with pain and his brain scrambled in his skull.

— And you got lost from the pack, son. Stepped on my crime scene and ended up back in my hand.

— That was a crime scene?

— Are you playing around with me?

— No way. The tapes were already torn.

— Torn? This ring is in front of your tears.

— The force codex indicates that in this context, the status of the forbidden police zone is void.

— I see, you remember the rules well. It warms my heart with pride, says Samson as he stands up - leans with both hands on the table - and approaches Wolfcrown's face with the morbid expression of someone who is beginning to lose patience. — But cools. My fucking. Dinner.

— I have all the time in the world, old man.

— I have all the power in the world, young man.

— Want to trade?

— Want to keep going?

— I want my constitutional right.

— Fair enough. I'll get you the best lawyer, son. After all those years with me on the front lines of the force, I owe you at least something, right? Samson stands up, picks up his ring as he walks away from the table, and turns his back. He takes out his cell phone from his coat, makes a call, turns back to Wolfcrown, takes out a pocket watch from his chest, and hands both to him in each hand while speaking in his ear with a pure tone of censure and lack of mercy.

— One year of sentence for every second that clicks.

Wolfcrown finds himself in shock while he watches Samson turn and walk towards the door.

— H-h-hold on, Sam. Wolfcrown says in what seems to be the first stutter of his entire life as his old mentor closes the interrogation room door.

In pure distress, Wolfcrown realizes the deep mistake he was making in underestimating Samson, perhaps thinking that he was still talking to his old friend and sensei who had not only given him the opportunity that changed his life forever, but also a family for his juvenile orphanhood. The phone dials.

The mind, once tired and numb, awakens in a rush of despair and a thousand plans to get out of that situation pass through his head. — There is no way this isn't a bluff, this old bastard would never do this to me, not after I saved his life.

He watches the watch as it clicks for the tenth time. The phone dials. — Ten more seconds and it's already enough time for my fucking life to rot in a fucking cell, damn it. Fucking. Damn it.

The watch clicks for the sixteenth time. The phone continues to dial.

— ZEUS! Wolfcrown screams at the top of his lungs to summon Samson back to that room as soon as possible.

The door opens and Samson enters the room holding a cone-shaped paper cup, glancing at his wristwatch before turning his attention to Wolfcrown.

— The damn tape was already torn because some woman with a damn cat ransacked the place looking for something. The cat's name was... Wolfcrown, wide-eyed Samson and with his hands on his head, finally finishes his testimony as a witness. — PIXEL!

The phone keeps ringing. Samson takes one last sip of water, crushes the cup with his hand, and says one final thing before leaving the interrogation room.

— Sometimes, my son, we think we're dodging a bullet when in fact we're shooting our own gun.

Samson leaves the room and closes the door, ending that chapter where, perhaps, Wolfcrown would never see him or the light of day again.

The phone finally connects a call.

— McDonald's, good morning! Can I take your order?

Wolfcrown throws it with all his might against the wall, unable to believe what just happened, not knowing if he actually felt his mind, his soul, or both violated.

— Dura lex, sed lex. He says as he surrenders to exhaustion and slowly closes his eyes.